A political thriller, a how-to, a memoir, a love story.Kim Stanley Robinson
The most thrilling policy narrative you’ll ever read.Rebecca Solnit
This is one of those few books that will be read for a long time.Bill McKibben
About the Book
They were perhaps an unlikely trio: the professor Leah Stokes, the policy wonk Sonia Aggarwal in the White House, and the DC insider Adrian Deveny in the Senate, but together, they crafted the boldest climate legislation of our time. In The Carbon Wave, Stokes chronicles the turbulent path of their climate bill as it veered between breakthrough and collapse—from the hopeful beginnings of the Green New Deal in 2018, to the bill’s near-certain defeat by Senator Joe Manchin in the winter of 2021, to the surprise passage of the landmark legislation in August 2022. During this critical time, the author was pregnant or in the NICU with her premature twins, and Aggarwal and Deveny were new parents too.
Interlacing personal narratives with stories from Congress, the White House, and outside activists, Stokes shows how dogged perseverance and collective action can still bend the course of history. The book concludes with an update from the second Trump administration, explaining the parts of the bill that were—and were not—rolled back, and why we should remain hopeful that progress is still being made.
Everyone has been told to shrink their carbon footprint and lighten their load on our planet by changing their behavior. But what if instead of making ourselves smaller, we joined with others to maximize our impact? That’s the carbon wave. And this book shows us how to make it.
About the Author
Leah C. Stokes is the Anton Vonk Associate Professor of Environmental Politics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she is also affiliated with the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and the Environmental Studies Department. She researches climate change, renewable energy, and public opinion. In 2022 she was named to TIME100 Next and to Business Insider’s top 30 global leaders working toward climate solutions.
Her first book, Short Circuiting Policy, was named the Best Energy Book of 2020 by the American Energy Society, listed among The New York Times’ top five climate books of the year, and won three awards from the American Political Science Association. She contributed to All We Can Save, the New York Times bestselling anthology of essays by women in climate, and co-hosts the podcast “A Matter of Degrees.”
Her academic research has been published in top journals including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Nature Energy, Energy Policy, and Environmental Science & Technology. She also has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, The Boston Globe, CNN and elsewhere and is frequently quoted in national media. She also holds a PhD in Public Policy in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning’s Environmental Policy & Planning group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a master’s from MIT’s Political Science Department.